Yes, we've switched over to Unreal Engine and it is going to be basically a rewrite of the code. The benefits are hopefully a much more optimized physics engine and multiplayer. I know the community and also us have been hoping for multiplayer for a long time, now we can have it.

As for peerplays integration, that will basically facilitate the players having an in-game marketplace where you can sell your creations. Some of you have put in a lot of hours into your creations and this will let you profit from that. Of course, you'll also be able to share your creations for free.

Will share more details as we get more things working. For now we're simply in development mode hoping this all works out.

thank you Sleeping_owl for finding these tidbits. More discussion on rawbots from the bitcoin threads

" There is a long thread at bitcointalk that has some discussion about what is happening to Rawbots.https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1462351.msg16615931#msg16615931https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1462351.msg16293253#msg16293253 "

I remember the devs talking about selling and buying blueprints back in the days. Rawbots has nothing to do with gambling, I think that peerplay will be used more like a platform for some sort of currency.

Also I think that rawbots on ue4 is 99% confirmed, rozgo was testing the phisics in the new UE 4.14 test release, if you look at the top right you can see that the project is called "Rawbots" and the map is called "Parts Gallery"

From here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1462351.msg16615931#msg16615931):

Quote

Development of Rawbots is underway and there's nothing new to report. It is slated for a soft launch at the end of April [2017].

On the Peerplays thing. If Rawbots is planned to be a persistent-universe type MMO (like Eve Online) or even an 'instanced' universe (World of Tanks, War Thunder, Gear Up) it makes sense to have a 'secure' ingame currency. Although I am not sure how much I like having said currency having 'real world' value. How much I [dis]like the idea also depends a lot on the monetisation plan.

No real problem with anything on this page. But having no info on how the game is going to be set up (contiguous single universe hosted on an official server? [Eve Online] Instanced multiverse hosted on official servers? [World of Tanks] Instanced multiverse on player servers [minecraft]) or how the ingame economy is going to work (can I earn 'Rawbots Gold' by my actions ingame?) it's hard to say whether being able to invest $US into buying blueprints etc is actually a good thing (also dependent on the yield of ingame actions, if I can buy everything I ever want with what I can earn ingame, why invest real money? If the yield is too low, you won't be able to be self-sustaining ingame, so why even try?)

(http://i.imgur.com/44wLbnb.jpg)

Got some issues with this... While it depends on the pricing model, but if it's 'pay $30 up front' or 'monthly sub' based I don't really like the idea of having to pay more to access what I would consider to be 'core' parts of the game. If it's just things like 'chrome shader for armor parts' , 'wheels that leave flame trails' , 'coloured smoke trails for jets' or 'plasma cannons shoot flaming skulls' and stuff like that which is 'just for fun' that fine imo. Even in a Free To Play environment, to avoid it becoming 'Pay To Win' you can't really have things like body armor or things that give a true, measurable ingame advantage.

I remember having a similar conversation about 10 years ago with one of the lead developers of Path Of Exile (https://www.pathofexile.com) on the subject, and the general gist of how they planned to fund their F2P model is this:

Quote

Completely free to download and play. Supported by ethical microtransactions.

Path of Exile is completely free to play - no upfront costs or monthly fees are required to enjoy 100% of the game content.

To fund the development and maintenance costs of the project, we plan to let players purchase aesthetic perks for their characters such as:

I dont think its possible for rawbots to pull off a cash grab if it wanted to. The player type is too niche, you could never sustain the churn a P2W game requires! As for the paid cosmetics, its an industry standard at this point and I think it wouldn't be too harmful. I am much more okay with an upfront cost , with the possibility of increasing that commitment down the road, than a subscription. EX: I dropped 240$ over two years on planetside 2 just buying ingame stuff as I wished, but dropped WoW because I felt like I wasn't getting enough game time for the 15$ a month subscription. Based on how "full" the final release of rawbots is, I could easily see 60$ upfront with another 60$ optional content for down the road.

as for rawbots "gold" , A model similar to RoboCraft would be fine, as you caaaaan buy blueprints with ingame currency, but its much faster to just buy one for a couple bucks.

also I noticed on the blueprint page designer and programmer have two different names. I wonder if they have plans for allowing us to create community bulletin "quests" so to speak. Like I can post a need for one of my bots to be programmed, and offer a price, or I can request a bot to fill a roll, and pay other players to design and program said bot?

still I really hope investors get interested in rawbots. I think I speak for everybody here when I say I love the concept and that the gaming industry really needs a good robot building game again.

I would have a solution specifically for the armor pieces issues. Make them intangible and collision-less. Here's why.

1. These parts would therefore be purely cosmetic and provide no functional benefits to paying customers

2. Adding cosmetic parts to a bot that needs to be functional wouldn't add any unwanted mass.

3. Since cosmetic armor would be physicsless, you could add it to bots without increasing their "real part count", which matters in some contests.

4. Physicsless armor could be made not to use any precious attach points and to instead be surface attached.

5. Some of the armor parts shown on that picture seems to have a complex shape. Making an accurate collider for those sounds like a challenge.

6. It would be possible for player to pay for the privilege of creating their own 3d models of armor (and sell them to others with a royalty, creating a new design should be several times the cost of buying a copy of an already created one) That would help a lot with building flexibility and would please perfectionists. Also encourages community interaction.

With that said, there are a couple caveats:

1. Solid looking armor would look strange if it didn't collide with anything (as if the programmers were lazy). You'd need to go with an energy projection/virtual/slightly translucent look for armor pieces. Also, it would be cool to have a subtle visual effect trigger when an armor piece overlaps another cosmetic or physical part (kinda like the sparkles of the laser) Hopefully unreal 4 could help you there.

2. The concept i presented would work if rawbots keeps its current look. However, if the art style somehow ends up revised somepoints may need to be altered.

Functional armor is already 100% possible to create without these fancy parts (as pressureline's bots shows) but it isn't very effective against lasers and grenades anyway. These can go through anything that isn't like >4 blocks thick, including terrain. Fixing this issue should be trivial for lasers, but somewhat harder for grenades.

Found this https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@neil-haran/hello-steemians-i-m-neil-early-crypto-enthusiast-and-activist-for-decentralization (https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@neil-haran/hello-steemians-i-m-neil-early-crypto-enthusiast-and-activist-for-decentralization)

Yes, we've switched over to Unreal Engine and it is going to be basically a rewrite of the code. The benefits are hopefully a much more optimized physics engine and multiplayer. I know the community and also us have been hoping for multiplayer for a long time, now we can have it.

As for peerplays integration, that will basically facilitate the players having an in-game marketplace where you can sell your creations. Some of you have put in a lot of hours into your creations and this will let you profit from that. Of course, you'll also be able to share your creations for free.

Will share more details as we get more things working. For now we're simply in development mode hoping this all works out.

I don't know how I managed to miss all the recent goings on despite having the ACL thread open since the summer.

I wonder if the move to the Unreal engine will be as drastic as changing to using bullet for physics was back in the day?

Perhaps a way to create semi-custom body/armour panels similar to the procedural fairings in KSP would allow for an intermediate solution between custom decorative parts and just using the standard existing parts.

Obviously development starting again is the big news, have I missed anything else? (I see the skeptics will be shamed page is still there.)

Maybe you are already aware, but rozgo and neil reportedly are working together again.

Also, "Perhaps a way to create semi-custom body/armour panels similar to the procedural fairings in KSP would allow for an intermediate solution between custom decorative parts and just using the standard existing parts."

As for peerplays integration, that will basically facilitate the players having an in-game marketplace where you can sell your creations. Some of you have put in a lot of hours into your creations and this will let you profit from that. Of course, you'll also be able to share your creations for free.

Do you have any details on the interaction between Rawbots ingame money (please call them botcoins) and real money?

How will it work with 'unrestricted' private servers? Is it possible to earn botcoins via ingame actions? (ie: extracting and processing resources) Can I convert botcoins back into USD? What protections against the system being used for illegal activity (money laundering etc) will be in place if the botcoin-USD conversion is a 2-way street?

Also, what is the planned server architecture? One big official server that everyone plays on? 'Rented' dedicated servers? (Similar to Minecraft Realms (https://minecraft.net/en/realms/?ref=m)) Full peer-to-peer client-client interaction? If it is P2P how are you planning to regulate the economy? (For example I could make a load of botcoins on a private server and transfer that balance to a big public server, thereby giving myself a massive advantage, or simply using Rawbots to mine USD)

Do you have any details on the interaction between Rawbots ingame money (please call them botcoins) and real money?

Haven't fully decided on this, but we will probably be using Bitcoin and possibly Faircoin (if they get their act together). This way, you won't have to worry much about conversion to real money and we can help make that process as painless as possible.

Regarding the architecture, it is too early to comment on this. We will be exploring different options and will keep you guys posted as we get further along.

Nice to see Rawbots isnt dead, but despite hoping for the best i have some doubts.ive been quiet for a long time, checking this forum every now and them, some might renember me though as i uploaded bots, tutorials and acl fights on youtube back in the good old days when xfm came out. (

) then i stopped as i had less time and the game seemed dead until i stumbled across this place.

That ingame blueprint shop doesnt make any sense to me, of course players that arent into programming might wanna spend money on some cool advanced bots, but there are a lot of problems involved with this. How could one protect his Ideas - what keeps others from copyiing your bot/code with little difference ? What about using a bought bot as base for your own bot and then selling this one ? Who will investigate such cases, what about legal stuff ? Reminds me of the trouble with payed Skyrim mods, they tried two times and it ended up in a mess. Only way to solve this i can think off is to make bought bots uneditable - u can spawn and steer em but u cant see the code or add/remove parts.

How will one know if the bots realy work ? Can u test em before u buy ( again what keeps u from copying then ), can u get a refound - who decides if the bot works as it should or not ? A reputation system alone cant solve this, demo videos can easily be faked.

If a bought bot uses bought cosmetic parts, will u have to buy them too or will the be replaced by some free parts ?

But most of all buying a blueprint is useless ( atleast in arena fights like acl ) - there soon will be a few bots that will dominate the fights, and if u take luck and arena conditions aside its very likely that bot "1" will always win against bot "2" which though might win against bot "3" which defeats bot "1" - so why would one buy one of this bots when u already know how the fights end up ? So u buy a set of bots and the fight like paper stone scissors ? Or worse, theres one super bot that domiantes all others, best u could do is to buy the same bot an wish for luck. So one will need to tweak and adjust his bot to win against the same model, which leads back to the "copyright" questions.

In an ACL like scenario i realy doubt such a shop would succed - however when the game gets to a point where u have a team of bots things change as one might buy bots for specific tasks so he can concentrate building for other tasks or even just have his individual combination of bought bots. But that would be a whole differnt game from what we have now.

Also it surprises me to see mr rozgo back in the team, i might have missed parts of the story but the last things i red was his partner having some serve accusations and even sueing him , any news about this ?

I think any potential blueprint store or design/programming contracts would be better using a system not directly related to any currency, either real or in-game. Using likes/downloads/rating to award more community focused rewards would be better, like an official 'Master Builder' title or small in-game customisation items. There could also be regular prizes for the creators of the most popular/highest rated blueprints rather than having a fixed payment for every download.

well if its just sharing bots they could simply use the steam workshop. To me the whole idea of a Blueprint store is to earn cash with the communitys creations. Seeing that there was no information about planned gameplay features / changes ( besides from switching to ue and vague multiplayer, there was no word about how the game would actualy work - sandbox ? - arena fights ? - rts like...? ) but already a nice jpeg describing the ingame shop, to me it seems like the devs have set their prioritys on money making. Especialy after what happened i think this is a very disappointing comeback and a wrong signal to the community.

Selling cosmetic Items or even small advantages like exp boosts is ok, if u enjoy the game its a good way to have a little extra fun while supporting the devs. But when it comes to communities creations or mods, the people already push sales by posting their creations ( think of besiege, they never had to do any marketing and had a huge hype ), so using those people who put so much heart and effort into the game to make some extra money feels wrong to me.

Btw Some months ago a DCS ( flightsim ) -modder tried to make his texture-mod official and sell it in the developers store but failed soon after the first mods were sold, not because noone would buy it ( he made more than 1000$ in pre sales ) but they had huge problems, the drm didnt work, some people had grafic issues, etc - Turned out that one modder alone can hardly fullfill the quality standards of a commercial software ( one modder most likely cant test multiple different hardware/os combinations, one person can hardly offer technical support to 1000s off costumers and the games-devs are busy on their own projects, so they cant offer much help ) So while a mod can be great, it can be a poor commercial product at the same time - u cant complain if a mod doesnt work for you, but as sonn as u buyed it..... The Textures were pulled from the store, the modder now simply accepts donations via paypal and i guess he earned more this way - atleast he can contine working on his mod in peace without having to care about support/refounds etc.

What if a sould blueprint doesnt work like its supposed to - can the creator be forced to fix it within a reasonable time ? How will the blueprint be explained / documented, example: you bought some fancy auto-aiming gun but cant figure out how to add it to your bot - will u get support from the creator ? what if he has no time or simply doesnt respond ? Who will care about all those complains ? Just look at the besiege steam workshop and imagine everytime someone cant figure out how something works you get an email...

As the problems with such a shop are as obvoius as endless ( atleast if the devs care about the blueprint customers rights ) i realy have my doubts

what id realy love to see would be a community remake of rawbots, i lack the programming knowledge for modern engines ( can do some basic C and Website stuff ) but could help with graphics and sound / music - i think of a rts game like the old earth2150 series or a bit like spore, where you get to design your units ( in an editor like the current rawbots ) then swap to an rts view where you build those bots in factories and order them around - im afraid ill never see the daylight again once such a game comes out :-)

I think trying to have an overarching game type/objective in which player built bots are pieces could lead to a difficulty cliff that would only make the game enjoyable to a narrow band of skill levels. If, for example, you had to build a tank bot to use in an RTS style game beginners would be struggling to hit anything in a manually controlled bot, while experienced players may have a team of automated bots capable of shooting down fast aircraft.

From what we've seen of the game so far, the best style would probably be a large sandbox with varied terrain and planets, with some resource harvesting required to build and power bots. Official built-in challeneges could be spread around the world, and there would be a way to create and share your own maps and challeneges.

A community remake would be great, but the community wasn't exactly huge back in the day, and now the forum only has 24 people who have ever posted.

Jesus guys, its been a few months again with nothing but silence! Was nothing learned from last time around? Hell don't even talk about the game, talk about what you had for breakfast. Better then seeing the dev-screen go dark.

Jesus guys, its been a few months again with nothing but silence! Was nothing learned from last time around? Hell don't even talk about the game, talk about what you had for breakfast. Better then seeing the dev-screen go dark.

I suppose it has been rather quiet recently, especially with the server going down for a while. But there are still a few of us here, and the server came back, so we're not going to just disappear again any time soon.